Bad Moon Rising

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You know the Conservatives are in trouble when Ian MacDonald says they are. No Liberal or Dipper, MacDonald got into politics as a spokesman for Brian Mulroney and as an ardent supporter of his high school classmate, Jim Flaherty. But now he is worried. The latest EKOS poll is bad news all around:

This isn’t the one bad poll in 20. And it wasn’t a one-night stand.

The Liberals now lead the Conservatives by 38.7 to 25.6 per cent, with the NDP at 23.4 per cent. In effect, the Liberals have doubled their vote from the 18.9 per cent they received in the 2011 election, while the Conservatives have plummeted from 39.6 per cent to the mid-20s. The Liberal brand is back.

The Liberals lead in every province except the Tory heartland of Alberta and Saskatchewan. And where it matters most — British Columbia and Ontario — the Liberals lead not by a little but by a lot: 37 to 22 in B.C., where the NDP is actually in second place at 26 per cent, and 46 to 28 in Ontario. Those are blow-out numbers, pointing to a Liberal sweep of the lower B.C. mainland and the Greater Toronto Area.

In Quebec, the NDP lead with 37 per cent, with the Liberals at 30 per cent, the Bloc at 16 per cent and the Conservatives at a measly 12 per cent. This means the Liberals would re-gain most of the Montreal and Outaouais regions, with the NDP retaining most of their seats in the rest of the province. The Bloc would disappear and the Conservatives would be shut out, except perhaps for a couple of seats in the 418 Quebec City region.

In the Atlantic zone, the Liberals lead the Conservatives 53 to 29, with the NDP at 21 per cent. What the Conservatives are getting Down East is pushback from voters on employment insurance reforms, much as the Liberals did in the 1997 election. These numbers point to the Liberals winning all but a handful of the 32 seats in the region.

And it's not just the regions that are turning against the Harperites. Demographics show that the political winds are changing:

Not only do the Liberals lead the Conservatives among men (40-28, with the NDP at 20 per cent), the Tories fall to third place among women (Libs 37, Dippers 27, Cons 23). And the Liberals lead in every age demo — even in the 45-64 and 65+ segments, traditional Tory strongholds.

So far, the Harper Party seems not to be concerned. They apparently believe that marijuana will be the wedge issue that brings Justin Trudeau down. But when party loyalists like MacDonald start to worry publicly, you know there is a bad moon rising.